


six to five and pick 'em

by simplyprologue



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: And Engineering Definitely Ran all the Betting Rings on the Ark, Bets & Wagers, Camp Jaha | Arkadia, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02, Pre-Season/Series 03, Things Get Boring in Camp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 08:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10917903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: Setting odds and making books is a time-honored Engineering tradition, and everyone in camp wants to bet on Marcus and Abby.





	six to five and pick 'em

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Written for the Slackru fluff challenge, which was to write Kabby from another character's point of view. I had to choose everyone's favorite dead Engineering dad(dy) Sinclair. Set during those golden months between seasons 2 and 3. Canon compliant. Marcus and Abby... do not actually have any lines in this, but they are very very present.

“I’ve set the over-under for April 27th. It’s the last day of scheduled planting for the new exterior agro centers.” Looming over the construction zone on her crutches, Raven flips imperiously through her clipboard as if it contained blueprints and supply schedules, not odds and hand-drawn calendars and tabulated dates. 

“That soon?” Sinclair asks, flipping through the pages on his own clipboard. 

_ Bets are taken in the form of: rations, moonshine, boots, jewelry, and unique items. Conversion rate will be determined by the bookkeeper. Anyone who finds the terms of their bet or prize money disagreeable will be invited to float themselves.  _ The same rules as always. 

“Did you see the way he looked at her this morning in the mess? I’d say that’s  _ late. _ ” 

The objects of their conversation are currently engrossed in Wick’s walking tour of the extended cistern and plumbing system, though debatably more in each other’s reactions to the progress than in the progress itself. Sinclair watches as Kane absently reaches for the back of Abby’s jacket, pinching the excess fabric between his thumb and index fingers to keep himself in her orbit for the  _ third  _ time. With a sense of flair, he inks another tally mark onto his sheet — he used to keep track of who was winning arguments and landing verbal jabs, now he counts near-touches and accidental affection. 

“Kane has never moved quickly on anything in his  _ life.  _ He does things by the book and by-rule or be damned,” he mutters, flipping far back enough on his clipboard to look at the actual plumbing schematic. “But Abby, on the other hand… you may have a point.” 

Raven sidles up to him, nearly landing her crutch on his boot. “Also, boss? Wasn’t gambling illegal on the Ark?”

“We’re not on the Ark, Reyes.” 

“True… but isn’t gambling still illegal now?” 

Technically, yes. 

“It’s all in good fun. Setting odds and making books is a time-honored Engineering tradition. We’ve only gotten caught three or four times.” That he knows of. In his tenure in Engineering. There’s honestly always been more of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it’s come to gambling on the Ark, provided no one’s kneecaps met with a ball peen hammer as a result of a wager gone horrifically wrong. 

“And who went on the one-way spacewalks for those?” she intones with her unique brand of droll mockery, maneuvering herself to his other side. 

“Generally we make sure someone high up on the guard placed bets so the evidence would just… walk off. Conveniently.” How else would Kane and Shumway have kept themselves in such high quality moonshine? 

“Damn, boss,” she says, lips quirking into a half-smile. “Listen, I’m not really keen on getting shock-lashed over a few extra rations.” 

Abby turns, grabbing Kane’s elbow, and doesn’t let go for a long moment — another tally mark for his sheet. 

“Shut up and set the odds.” 

With a sigh, Raven plants the tip of her crutch in the mud and brings her list to her face, droning, “Twelve to one odds on Kane and Abby getting their shit together within the next two weeks. Ten to one odds on Kane and Abby getting their shit together within the next month. Eight to one odds — what happens if there’s a Grounder attack and Kane sweeps Abby up his arms in medical because he’s just so happy she’s alive and needs to show her  _ right damn now?  _ I mean, no one can really predict that.” 

“You just did,” he points out, then pauses thoughtfully. “And I’d say that’s three to one.” 

“We don’t have a relative probability for a Grounder attack,” Raven muses, cocking her head to one side. “Or Clarke wandering back into camp — which, I would say, would distract Abby and lower the odds of any  _ meeting of government  _ to a hundred to one.” 

“Unless Kane is the one to find Clarke.” 

“True.” She squints at the contents of her clipboard. “What are you betting on?” 

“A good bookkeeper never places his own bets.”

She scoffs. “I’m the one making the damn book, Sinclair.” 

“Well, winter is coming,” he says, mostly thinking out loud more than anything else. It’s already started to get cold overnight, frost on the grass welcoming them into the morning. Kane’s been coming back from third shift watches looking more and more pitiably chilled. “People will have to huddle together for warmth. Kane’s never been one I’d call warm, in recent history, but that beard is looking pretty cozy.” 

“Do you think he’s growing it for her? Like… you know,” she whispers conspiratorially. 

“Reyes… I don’t… need to be picturing that.” 

Suddenly, he feels the need to do another count of joiners, make sure none had wandered off for anyone’s unsanctioned beverage operations. Not without him getting a cut, anyway. 

“Listen, if Kane and Abby invited me to be the third leg in a tripod, I would consider it for a bit before turning them down. That’s all I’m saying,” she says, leaning to smirk at him at closer quarters. “You, on the other hand. You should say yes.” Sinclair is aware there is an expression on his face that is a direct response to the words that came out of Raven’s mouth. He does not wish to examine it any closer than that. “What? You need to get some sweet Earth action too.” 

He screws up his face into another expression, one which may be classed as confusion and mild disgust. 

“Thanks. I think.” 

He’s known Abby since they were  _ six years old.  _ And while on the Ark familiarity could breed all kinds of things — contempt, filial love, undeniable sexual attraction — he would always look at Abby and think of the girl with the pigtails who could draw an anatomically correct diagram of the heart while still in kindergarten and turned up her nose at his Valentine’s Day card. 

Whether or not Kane would stay the asshole cadet giving him a hard time over running a book on the Chancellor election was still up for debate. 

“But seriously, how do you think it will happen?” 

With a sigh he leans on one of the stakes erupting up from the ground. 

“You know, I used to be called in to testify in Council meetings and any questions they had for me would turn into shouting at each other. It was like they were the only two people in the room.” 

“But shouting,” Raven says. “He was pretty keen on floating her, you know.” 

Sinclair winces. So much shouting. But not as much, not anymore. Some time during the last days of the Ark, Kane and Abby had realized their goals aligned more than they did not, once the policy decisions and titles and rank were stripped away to  _ survive, or don’t. Choose.  _ “There’s a thin line between love and hate.” 

“They don’t shout at each other anymore.” 

She makes a noise which might be a dreamy exhale, coming from anyone else. Pressing her cheek against the cool stake, she joins him in looking at their fearless leader and her head of security across the yard, Kane holding Abby’s arm so that she doesn’t lose her footing on the mud and slurry. 

“I think they do their arguing behind closed doors. She’s Chancellor now, I don’t think he’d undermine her in front of the entire camp. A year ago… maybe, but not now.” 

“Do we have odds for retroactively—”

“They’re not.”

“How do you know?”

First, because Abby Griffin has never been quiet about anything in her entire life. 

“Abby requests her morning briefing in her quarters at 0630 every day,” is his answer for Raven, one more concretely based in fact and doesn’t give her an opening for a quip. “He’s never there.” 

“He could be sneaking out.” 

“Kane’s always been more of a strut and preen kind of guy,” he replies, laughing quietly. Ever since he rose up from the rank and file, Kane could clear a hallway just by walking down it. “Even when we were teenagers. Should have seen him when he first made lieutenant on the guard. It was brutal.” 

Her face splits into a grin. “So we’ll know when they’ve done the do because he’ll be walking around the place like the cock of the walk.” 

Don’t give her an opening, and she’ll make one anyway. That’s his Raven. 

“Reyes…” 

“I have high hopes for Abby. She’s my friend.”

“I’ve known her longer than you’ve been alive.” 

“Is that why you’re not placing a bet? Because you took Earth Skills together back when she wore her hair in two braids?” Swinging herself around the stake, she crashes into him. “Or is it because you’re not sure if  _ either  _ of them will make a move.”

Sinclair bops her on top of the head with his clipboard before sauntering away. Not very far, because that would entice her to follow him and continue this conversation at a higher volume, but far enough to keep her and her crutches out of reach. There are blueprints to pretend that he hasn’t had memorized frontwards and backwards yet. 

“Oh, they’re a sure bet.” 

Something in Raven’s face softens. “I was gonna say, you weren’t there in Mount Weather, boss.” 

And some days he sincerely regrets that. 

But it meant that in the days following their war party’s return he was hale and healthy enough to make sure all the plates were spinning while everyone sorted themselves out in medical, and while Kane  _ ensured  _ that Abby would sort herself out… not go out on her injured leg into the woods, screaming for Clarke. No, instead it was himself, on Kane’s orders, delivering a long-range radio and other supplies to a Grounder woman named Indra and extracting a promise that any Clarke-sighting would be radioed in to Arkadia. 

“He’s never looked at anyone like that before,” he says quietly. “I’ve been watching Marcus Kane do his job for twenty years now and he’s…  _ never  _ looked at any woman like he’s looking at Abby Griffin right now.” 

Wick hands Kane and Abby his datapad, and they bow their heads together to look at the screen. There’s no presumption of space between them, only that it is freely shared. He can’t imagine Kane and Abby standing shoulder to shoulder, brushing up against each other, their mouths inches apart as they discuss — something. He can’t imagine what any of them would have said had they been told that in six months they’d be this close. 

Well, he imagines he has  _ some  _ idea of what Abby would have said. 

_ Kane? Really, Jacopo? Do I look like I’m oxygen deprived yet?  _

But she doesn’t call him Kane anymore. 

Sinclair realizes that he and Raven have company, hiding his clipboard against his chest just in time to realize it’s someone who doesn’t care. Rule number one: never run a betting pool on your datapad. It can be hacked, it can be requisitioned, it can be subpoenaed. But paper can be obscured with shitty handwriting or more importantly, fire. 

“Yes, Bellamy?” 

“I’d like to put my rations on the first two weeks in January, sir,” he says, shoving his hands into his jacket and smiling, looking at Kane and Abby out of the corner of his eye. 

“New Year’s Day?” He uncaps his pen, flipping over pages recycled paper to his hand-drawn ledger. Octavia placed the first bet over a cup of Monty’s moonshine the night before, as soon as Raven let the words  _ betting pool  _ leave her mouth. Not just a few delinquents followed suit, and thus he was duty-bound as the most experienced bookie to run said betting bool. “You’ll be kicking yourself if it turns out on New Year’s Eve. First two weeks of January are only six to one odds.”

“No one kisses before midnight, sir. Respectfully.” 

“Got a lot of experience in that area?” Raven interjects, nodding to Gina, working on stripping coiling for insulation some ten yards off. 

“Shut up, Raven, and take my money.” 

Sinclair hides a laugh with a cough. “Who knows?” 

“Oh, everyone,” Bellamy says, examining the sole of his boot with great interest before looking up and staring at Kane and Abby, now walking in lockstep on their way back inside Alpha Station, their attention only for the other. “But I think  _ they’re _ oblivious. In more way than one.” 

That was the topic of conversation the night before in the mess hall after Abby had appeared over Kane’s shoulder, requesting his opinion on something or other, and before she had even finished getting the words out of her mouth he was pushing back his chair, the legs scraping over the floor, and chasing after her. They’d each had their stories — Bellamy, Octavia, Harper, Raven, Monty, Jasper — of finding Kane watching over Abby asleep on her couch, or bringing her endless cups of coffee, or Abby waiting for him at the end of a watch. Sinclair figures that so many of them have lost their parents, now. Lost everything else, too, except each other. 

Engineering used to bet on anything to break up the tedium. 

This feels a little bit different. 

Like broken children looking to take something good and hold on with both hands. Like hope. 

“Who do you think will kiss who first? Who’s gonna break?” Bellamy asks, sitting on the edge of the table, folding his arms. 

Sinclair expects Raven to shoot back an answer, but instead finds both of the kids looking at him expectantly. 

He shrugs, searching every memory he has of Kane and Abby, going back nearly two decades. When has either of them broken before the other? No quarter given, and none asked for Marcus Kane and Abby Griffin. They both can be stubborn asses, when they get it in their heads to be.  _ He _ sure as shit wouldn’t bet on which of them breaks first. 

He tosses his clipboard down onto the table. 

“That one is six to five and pick ‘em.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
